Letters from the Faceless & Nameless

Sarah, Davis and I have considerably evolved our project since last time we posted in the blog. Our project now is to essentially exhibit a collection of ‘Unsent letters’ that have been submitted to us from anonymous writers over the internet. The letters will hopefully tell unique personal stories about love, heartbreak, friendship/relations, rivalry, tragedy, trial, confessions or even really random accounts – ANYTHING that people wish to get off their chest by telling the world, yet at the same time remaining Anonymous.

Why are we doing this? Well, our group is fascinated with the notion of presenting the private details/intimate thoughts of an Individual into a public setting – such as a art gallery. Many artists have explored similar concepts, in particular Astra Howard who is an artist renowned for her performances of public actions in urban public spaces. One of her works, ‘CITYtalking’ (2006), involved the use of a ‘conversation booth’ in which Astra and a willing participant had a private conversation inside. However Astra ,sitting opposite the participant, typed out what the participant was saying into a laptop device, which in turn transmitted the conversation to LED screens positioned on the outside of the booth allowing passing pedestrians to read what was said. Scandalous.

CITYtalking, (2006) Astra Howard - Photography by Greg Sims

We need to work out how we exhibit the anonymous letters. We think we should write out the letters in our own hand writing (the letters are comming to us in digital text) to create a more authentic experience.

We currently have 2 different idea’s on how we could exhibit these hand written letters :

We could exhibit the letters on the wall in a kind of messy collage. The spectator would walk along the wall and and be able to read the letters at their own will.

What our Wall of letters could look like, photo by Stefan Djenadic,

OR

We could place each individual letter into its own Envelope (Sealed). Each envelope would contain the title of the intended anonymous recipient – EG, if the letter was aimed at some guys girlfriend, then the front of the envelope may read “To my lovely Girlfriend”. The reason why is because the participant will pick out such titles that interest them (everyone judges a book by its cover), then they could unseal the envelope and read the letter inside. This type of exhibition method is much more interactive. What do you guys think?

Envelope with Letter inside

For now we just need to start collecting and writing the letters. I have sent out the cry out for letters over various social networks, and have recieved some interesting responses. We just need More. And We need to start writing them out by hand as well.